Rawle Howard, the European head of private real estate debt at Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, has left the giant pension fund to join a real estate tech firm.
Howard has moved to Cloudscraper, where he has been appointed global head of capital markets. He is the second big name to join the company from the real estate finance world, with Matt Webster, the former global head of real estate finance at HSBC, having been appointed chief financial officer in January.
Launched in January, Cloudscraper claims to be the world’s first fully integrated institutional real estate trading data platform for buying, selling and financing assets. It links commercial real estate trading opportunities, stakeholders, their advisers, equity and debt capital into an independent data ecosystem that strives to radically reduce transaction times.
The company says it has hundreds of global real estate institutions on board, representing in excess of $350bn (£266bn) of assets.
It has its headquarters in London, with additional offices in Tel Aviv, Dublin and Frankfurt.
Before joining CPPIB in 2015, Howard was head of origination at BlackRock’s European real estate debt group. He had previously worked in the US real estate market for BlackRock and Lehman Brothers.
Before embarking on his finance career, Howard was a co-founder of technology start-up Webbe Inc, a venture capital-backed instant messaging software company. He also played in the NFL for the New York Jets.
Howard said: “I am grateful for the incredible opportunity to be part of a company which is at the forefront of disrupting and revolutionising the commercial real estate space.”
“The commercial real estate industry is set to undergo massive change and I believe that Cloudscraper is well positioned to become an industry leader. The Cloudscraper exchange provides users with the tools and insight necessary to make informed investment decisions.”
Cloudscraper chairman and chief executive Moses Gottlieb added: “Rawle brings with him many years of global real estate and technology experience, and has held leading roles in practically all segments of the real estate industry, from equity investing to senior and mezzanine loan finance, to non-performing debt workouts and restructuring.”
“We are pleased to welcome Rawle to the leadership team. After over four years developing the technology, the company is now beginning to roll out the service in key markets worldwide. The addition of Rawle is an enormous step forward in our efforts to build a world-class management team which will drive the growth and adoption of the Cloudscraper platform in key markets globally.”
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